Alfred T. Jones

339 Simcoe Street, Near Corner of Simcoe Street and Waterloo Street.

 

Alfred T. Jones worked as what we would now call a pharmacist and in 1866 his home was located on the corner of Simcoe and Waterloo Streets.

His story comes from Benjamin Drew’s 1856 book, The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada.

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I keep an apothecary shop on Ridout street. I belonged in Madison County, Kentucky. I have made an arrangement to purchase my freedom for $350. This was in 1833, when I was twenty-three years old. But before the business was completed, I learned that my master was renegotiating with another party to sell me for $400. Upon this, I wrote for my self a pass– it was not spelled correctly, but nobody there supposed a slave could write at all. I had to exhibit it but once on my way.

I stopped a month at St. Catharines, then came to London, and have remained here ever since.

The people from the old country, being many of them unaccustomed to colored people, have some strange ideas respecting us: a sort of “second-hand prejudice,” as Ward calls it. The majority of the people of color who come over here are not such as give a very good idea of what the people of color really are. They are not refined and educated. But as some years are passed since the colored men began to come in, there is an improvement perceptible.

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